Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton
(1903 - 1995)

Irish physicist, corecipient, with Sir John Douglas Cockcroft of England,
of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics for the development of the first
nuclear particle accelerator, known as the Cockcroft-Walton generator.
After studying at the Methodist College, Belfast, and graduating in
mathematics and experimental science from Trinity College, Dublin (1926),
Walton went in 1927 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was to work
with Cockcroft in the Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford until
1934. In 1928 he attempted two methods of high-energy particle acceleration.
Both failed, mainly because the available power sources could not generate
the necessary energies, but his methods were later developed and used
in the betatron and the linear accelerator. Then in 1929 Cockcroft and
Walton devised an accelerator that generated large numbers of particles
at lower energies. With this device in 1932 they disintegrated lithium
nuclei with protons, the first artificial nuclear reaction not utilizing
radioactive substances.

After gaining his Ph.D. at Cambridge, Walton returned to Trinity College,
Dublin, in 1934, where he remained as a fellow for the next 40 years
and a fellow emeritus thereafter. He was Erasmus Smith professor of
natural and experimental philosophy from 1946 to 1974 and chairman of
the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
after 1952.